One of the biggest events in history unfolded before the eyes of an Araluen technical specialist, who watched the first transmitted images of the moon landing over the shoulder of a video signal processor.
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It was 40 years ago yesterday when the crew of Apollo 11 completed half of their space journey and landed on the surface of the moon.
For Bryan Sullivan, the landing was the result of four years of successful preparation at the Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station in Canberra.
“One of the major things I remember from that moment was turning around behind me and near the main door to the operations centre, a group of people ... were all standing rigid and silent and staring at an overhead monitor hanging from the ceiling,” he said.
“They weren’t saying anything. They were absolutely transfixed like the Terracotta Warriors in China.”
Mr Sullivan was one of the first people to see the events unfold on that day. He watched the live pictures while keeping an eye on the computers he worked at.
Another local who was involved was Rudi Langeveld, of Bingie Bingie, who worked at Tidbinbilla at the time of the moon landing.
The enormity of the day only started to sink in for Mr Sullivan while he was driving home after his shift had finished.
“We were travelling home from the tracking station, there were four of us, and it was a very strange trip home. Hardly anybody spoke. I was pre-occupied with my own thoughts and thinking back now, the other people were as well,” he said.
Mr Sullivan worked for three years to ensure his role in the moon landing would be flawless. But the real dangers of what could happen were always in the back of his mind.
“What if it’s my piece of equipment that I’m responsible for, what if it causes the death of the astronauts?” he said. “We were lucky on that day.”
But this luck changed during the Apollo 13 mission, when he described the situation as “all hell breaking loose”.
“I had just walked back upstairs from the canteen and sat in the big chair ... we couldn’t believe what happened.”
It was only by chance that Mr Sullivan was able to join the team at the tracking station after a colleague at his previous job noticed a newspaper advertisement that was looking for technical specialists. He was successful in his application and moved his family from Sydney, leaving his role with an electrical firm in Homebush.
He stayed with the tracking station until 1974 after the third Skylab project. It was at that point he could see the “writing on the wall” because of the push towards increased automation and no planned exploration missions by NASA.
Araluen became home for the technician and he has been there for 20 years.
Yesterday was the first opportunity for Mr Sullivan and Mr Langeveld to meet up with those who remain that were involved in the project at a luncheon in Canberra. Mr Sullivan also met international visitors who were only known by voices over headsets while coordinating the program 40 years ago.
